Tom Brown’s Body
October 6, 2020
Tom Brown’s Body, Chapter 2: Tom’s Loop
“My gut tells me he hasn't left Hemphill County. I think he's here somewhere, and I don't know if he intends to come out in the next day or two.”
True Crime
Only in Texas could crime stories contain such characters as a murderous cheer mom, a fraudulent fruitcake accountant, and a polo shirt–wearing bandit. Over the years, we’ve shone a light on these true tales to look deeper than the headlines and tell the stories of the victims.
Tom Brown’s Body
September 29, 2020
Tom Brown’s Body
In 2016 a popular teenager disappeared in the tiny Panhandle community of Canadian, Texas. Two years later, his remains were discovered beneath a tree outside of town. But to this day, no arrests have been made, and nearly everyone involved in the case has fallen under suspicion. Beginning September 29,
Tom Brown’s Body
September 29, 2020
Tom Brown’s Body, Chapter 1: A Pretty Little Place
In 2016 a popular teenager disappeared in the tiny Panhandle community of Canadian. Two years later, his remains were discovered beneath a tree outside of town. But to this day, no arrests have been made, and it seems that nearly everyone involved in the case has fallen under suspicion.
True Crime
August 19, 2020
The Wildest Insurance Fraud Scheme Texas Has Ever Seen
Over a decade, Theodore Robert Wright III destroyed cars, yachts, and planes. That was only the half of it.
True Crime
May 18, 2020
The Santa Fe High School Shooting’s Uncounted Victims
Two years after the shooting left ten dead and thirteen injured, survivors like Isabelle Laymance and their families are still dealing with the aftermath.
True Crime
May 11, 2020
Five Judges Say Rosa Jimenez Was Wrongly Convicted. So Why Is She Dying in Prison?
First came the sound of someone running hard on the breezeway outside, then a banging on the apartment door. Irene Vera opened it to see her neighbor, twenty-year-old Rosa Jimenez, holding a little boy who lay limp in her arms. “Help me! Help me!” Jimenez cried hysterically in Spanish. The
True Crime
March 18, 2020
The Aftermath
In 1978, an eighth grader killed his teacher. After 20 months in a psychiatric facility, he was freed. His classmates still wonder: What really happened?
True Crime
December 18, 2019
The Doctor, the Dentist, and the Killer
Brenda thought she and Ricky would be together forever, until he left her. Kendra thought she and Ricky would be together forever. Then Brenda took matters into her own hands. Inside the case of jealousy, spying, and murder that shook Uptown Dallas.
True Crime
September 18, 2019
The Hunt for the Serial Killer of Laredo
Last September, law enforcement officers were confounded by a murderer targeting prostitutes along the border. As the investigation intensified, they discovered that the killer had been hiding in plain sight.
True Crime
July 23, 2019
Crowdsourcing Justice
How does a man wrongly convicted of murder get released twenty years later? It helps to have a wife who loves you, a podcaster who believes in you, and an army of amateur sleuths who won’t stop digging for the truth.
True Crime
May 29, 2019
Her Daughter Was Disappeared in Mexico. Despite Cartel Death Threats, She’s Determined to Find Her.
After Josefina De León’s daughter went missing in the Mexican State of Tamaulipas in 2012, she was determined to find her. Seven years later, she hasn’t given up.
True Crime
May 13, 2019
Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild
He called himself the Tiger King and plastered his face on highway billboards in Texas and Oklahoma. He bred big cats, bears, baboons, and more. He lived, with a parade of partners, on the grounds of his private zoo. He threatened a rival with murder—repeatedly, on YouTube—and tried to hire
True Crime
February 20, 2019
When Does an Accident Become a Crime?
Driving through a dangerous curve in Tyler, James Fulton crossed into oncoming traffic and killed a young woman. He wasn’t drunk, and the cops said the crash was an accident. But the Smith County DA saw it differently.
True Crime
October 31, 2018
Catfishing and Conspiracy in Groves
A young city councilman’s Grindr photos were leaked, and he now faces a recall election. Was there a conspiracy to oust him, and did it come from inside City Hall?
True Crime
October 27, 2018
The Hero of the Sutherland Springs Shooting Is Still Reckoning With What Happened That Day
One year ago, after Stephen Willeford disrupted the mass murder at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, he was hailed as the ultimate good guy with a gun, but he's still reckoning with what happened that day—and what his life has become.
True Crime
September 25, 2018
True Crime Podcast ‘Dr. Death’ Examines the Tale of a Maniacal Dallas Surgeon
The podcast looks to an old case—and suggests a new model for archival true crime podcasts.
True Crime
September 21, 2018
The Cartel Next Door
How prosecutors tied a brazen murder in an upscale Dallas suburb to one of Mexico’s most violent criminal organizations.
True Crime
September 4, 2018
Ed Ates Wants His Name Back
How a motley crew of young Texas lawyers, a burly Michigan podcaster, and his army of amateur sleuths—including actor Jon Cryer—helped free a man convicted of a murder he swears he didn’t commit.
Critters
August 24, 2018
Who’s Killing Buck Birdsong’s Cows?
Life on the ranch was hard enough already, and full of uncertainty. Then a string of dead calves turned up, and everything pointed to murder. But why? And how? A Longview mystery.
News
August 15, 2018
A Hit-and-Run Killed an Immigrant Father of Five in Austin
He worked 80-hour weeks to send money home to his family. The driver who ran him over had been in and out of trouble for years.
True Crime
August 14, 2018
Revisiting Bernie: The Story of Small-Town Murder That Inspired a Linklater Film
In our premier Texas Monthly Trove film, Skip Hollandsworth takes a look back at one of the strangest stories in his writing career, involving a beloved funeral director, a wealthy widow, and a tragedy in the small Texas town of Carthage.
True Crime
July 20, 2018
Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
Jeff Henry often said that his goal in life was to make customers of his family’s legendary water parks happy—“to put a smile on their faces, to give them a thrill or two.” It was a beautiful vision. Until it went horribly wrong.
True Crime
May 30, 2018
Stolen Youth: Modern-Day Slavery in Texas
When Given Kachepa first arrived from Zambia as a young boy, he expected to sing in a choir and gain an education. Instead he was forced into servitude.
True Crime
May 19, 2018
Jeff Pike, Texas’s Own Tony Soprano
Earlier this spring, Jeff Pike, the head of the infamous Texas-based Bandidos motorcycle club, went on trial in federal court for racketeering. Prosecutors called him a ruthless killer, the man behind one of the deadliest biker shoot-outs in American history, at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco. Pike, however, said
True Crime
April 18, 2018
The Doting Boyfriend Who Robbed Armored Cars
Beginning in 2015, Houston was plagued by a series of brutal armored car robberies that bewildered FBI agents for nearly two years. To finally bring down the unassuming mastermind behind it all, the agents had to stage an elaborate trap—and catch him in the act.
True Crime
March 21, 2018
The FBI Agent Who Can’t Stop Thinking About Waco
A quarter century after 82 Branch Davidians and 4 federal officers died outside Waco, retired FBI agent Byron Sage still can't stop thinking—and arguing—about what happened.
True Crime
March 21, 2018
After the Bombings, Looking Back at Austin’s First Serial Killer
The Midnight Assassin, who terrorized Austin 138 years ago, also targeted minorities first.
True Crime
February 21, 2018
The Girl Who Told the Truth
A decade ago, Gabby Sones accused her parents and five others of running the most depraved child sex ring in Texas history. Now she’s ready to clear their names.
True Crime
December 14, 2017
For Lagordiloca, Live-Streaming Crime Scenes Is Just a Night’s Work
Priscilla Villarreal doesn’t work for the local news in Laredo—but for her 80,000 Facebook followers, that doesn’t matter.
True Crime
November 30, 2017
Shell-shocked
When Alberto Mendiola returned to El Paso from the war in Afghanistan, he was suffering from severe, untreated PTSD. But is that a viable defense for murder?
True Crime
March 22, 2017
The Wild Bunch
Two years after a deadly Waco shoot-out, the local district attorney is trying to take down the Bandidos and Cossacks biker clubs. It won’t be easy.
True Crime
March 22, 2017
The Trouble With Innocence
Kerry Max Cook did everything to clear his name of a horrifying murder. So when he was finally exonerated, why did he ask for his conviction back?
True Crime
December 21, 2016
The Prisoner
Edwin Debrow committed murder at age 12. Now 37, he remains behind bars. When should a child criminal be given a second chance?
True Crime
September 9, 2016
Cops and Robbers
They were some of the toughest narcs on the border, known for busting smugglers, staging raids, seizing cartel cocaine—and being dirty.
True Crime
August 24, 2016
The Yes Man
He was just a regular kid in South Texas, until a brush with the law propelled Gabriel Cardona into petty crime—and the service of a drug lord rising to power across the Rio Grande. In this exclusive excerpt from Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers and Mexico’s Most Dangerous Drug Cartel, Dan
True Crime
July 13, 2016
The Murders at the Lake
In 1982 three teenagers were killed near the shores of Lake Waco in a seemingly inexplicable crime. More than three decades later, the tragic and disturbing case still casts a long, dark shadow.
Arts & Entertainment
April 4, 2016
Murders in the Night
An exclusive excerpt from The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer reveals a forgotten time in Austin history, when a series of brutal, unsolved slayings terrified officials and left them wondering if a madman was on the loose.
True Crime
December 23, 2015
Just Desserts
Sandy Jenkins was a quiet accountant at the Collin Street Bakery who felt overlooked and dreamed of living the good life. He found it (for a while) by embezzling nearly $17 million from the famed fruitcake maker.
True Crime
December 23, 2015
False Impressions
How the once troubled Texas Forensic Science Commission put the state at the forefront of the criminal justice reform movement.
True Crime
October 21, 2015
The Outcast
A dark incident almost twenty years ago put Greg Torti on the sex offender registry for life. But the real story, he insists, is much more complicated.
True Crime
June 16, 2015
The Talented Mr. Khater
In 2011 Callie Quinn moved from Austin to Chile to experience a new way of life. Then she met a charming fellow foreigner—and almost lost everything.
True Crime
December 9, 2014
A Tree Is Known By Its Fruit
When the 85-year-old matriarch of a prominent pecan-farming clan in San Saba was murdered, her death shook the town—and exposed how obsession and greed can fell a family from within.
True Crime
November 13, 2014
Man on Fire
The Reverend Charles Moore ardently dedicated his life to the service of God and his fellow man. But when he couldn’t shake the thought that he hadn’t done enough, he drove to a desolate parking lot in his hometown of Grand Saline for one final act of faith.
True Crime
October 21, 2014
A Shooting on Spring Grove Avenue
Olivia Lord told Dallas police officers that her boyfriend put a gun to his head after a drunken argument. Detective Dwayne Thompson couldn’t see how the evidence—or motive—made any sense. How did Michael Burnside die on May 9, 2010?
True Crime
May 9, 2014
“I Would Only Rob Banks for My Family”
Scott Catt was a single dad who held up banks to make ends meet. As his greed intensified, he knew just whom to enlist as accomplices: his kids.
True Crime
March 12, 2014
The Girl Who Saw Too Much
Robin Doan was ten years old when a stranger killed her entire family. Nearly ten years later, she refuses to let the past haunt her.
True Crime
February 11, 2014
A Question of Mercy
In 1998 famously tough Montague County district attorney Tim Cole sent a teenager to prison for life for his part in a brutal murder. The punishment haunts him to this day.
True Crime
January 21, 2013
Free Richard Lafuente!
They say he ran over Eddie Peltier with his El Camino on a North Dakota Indian reservation in 1983. He says he didn’t do it, and the evidence is overwhelmingly on his side—yet the Plainview native has languished in federal prison for twenty years. It’s long past time for justice
True Crime
January 21, 2013
“If the Serial Killer Gets Us, He Gets Us”
Police had all but given up looking into a pair of assaults against two prostitutes in the Houston neighborhood of Acres Homes. But when a third turned up dead, investigator Darcus Shorten embarked on a search that revealed a brutal reality.
True Crime
January 21, 2013
A Closer Look at One of Dean Corll’s Victims
Dorothy Hilligiest's son David disappeared one day in 1971. She spent her days and nights searching for him, following leads, and eagerly awaiting his return. And then she found out about Dean Corll, one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history.